Customer Case Study
Insurance Firm Increases Responsiveness for
Competitive Advantage
With Cisco Unified Communications, Warner Pacific Insurance Services has improved
client service and reduced teleworking costs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WARNER PACIFIC INSURANCE SERVICES
● Insurance
● Westlake Village, California
● 103 employees; three-person IT group
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
● Support company growth
● Enhance customer service
● Reduce telephony costs
NETWORK SOLUTION
● Replace PBX with Cisco Unified
Communications system
● Ring mobile employees’ desk phone and cell
phone concurrently
● Use Cisco Unified MeetingPlace for voice and
video conferencing
BUSINESS RESULTS
● Saved US$150,000 to US$200,000 annually
● Increased responsiveness
● Reduced cost of continuing education
seminars by 50 percent
Business Challenge
With operations throughout California and Colorado,
Warner Pacific Insurance Services provides
insurance agents and brokers with tools, resources,
and support to represent a wide selection of
medical, dental, vision, life, and other specialty
insurance products. Major insurance carriers use
general agencies such as Warner Pacific as a
marketing and distribution channel for their products
or as an extension of their own sales and service
force. The company has approximately 100
employees, including 70 teleworkers.
The voice system has strategic significance to
Warner Pacific, which receives an average of 2500
calls daily from thousands of brokers throughout
California and Colorado as well as other states. The
company’s half dozen operators answer every call
personally—part of Warner Pacific’s commitment to
customer service. “Our voice system is business-critical, because if someone can get in touch with
us more easily than a competitor, we gain a competitive advantage,” says Dave Nelson, co-CEO.
When Warner Pacific added a second building to its headquarters in Westlake Village, California, in
2004, it decided to replace its private branch exchange (PBX) system, which otherwise would have
needed an expensive capacity upgrade. The company decided to take advantage of the
opportunity to consolidate its previously separate systems for voice, voicemail, and data into a
single unified communications system. A primary requirement for the new system was the ability to
serve more users without requiring the company to purchase additional support modules. “We
wanted to simply connect new IP phones as needed,” says Mike DeDecker, network administrator.
Another criterion was for employees to be able to set up and conduct voice and video conferences.
Finally, to avoid hiring new IT staff, Warner Pacific wanted the ability to perform moves, adds, and
changes without paying a service provider.
Network Solution
The company uses Cisco® Unified Communications Manager for call processing, Cisco Unity,
Cisco Unified MeetingPlace for conferencing, and Cisco Unified MobilityManager with the Cisco
Mobile Connect application to reach mobile company employees on their mobile phones or
personal digital assistants (PDAs). This single-number-reach capability is especially valuable for
All contents are Copyright © 1992–2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Customer Case Study
employees who are rarely at their desks, like Ken Doyle, director of marketing. Whenever a call is
transferred to his desk extension, his cell phone rings at the same time. “By directing calls to my
cell phone, Cisco Mobile Connect helps me provide better service to our field sales reps and broker
clients,” he says. It also saves time for Doyle by reducing the time that he spends listening to
voicemail and returning calls, previously around 30 minutes a day.
Approximately 40 Warner Pacific salespeople and executives use Cisco Unified Wireless IP
phones to receive calls from wherever they may be on campus. Employees appreciate that the
Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G has the same functions as their desk phones, including a
speakerphone, mute button, and easy-to-use volume buttons on the phone case. “The long battery
life is also very helpful, because if we forget to plug in the IP phone overnight, it is still working the
next morning,” says DeDecker. The color screen and graphical user interface make the Cisco
Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G simple to use.
“When we consider new business opportunities, we no
longer need to ask ourselves if our phone system can
handle it. With our Cisco Unified Communications
system, we are free to add communications capabilities
as opportunities arise.”
—Dave Nelson, Co-CEO, Warner Pacific Insurance Services
Warner Pacific’s teleworkers connect to the Cisco Unified Communications system using Cisco
Unified IP phones and Cisco 871 VPN Routers, gaining access to all of the same productivity
features available at headquarters, including Cisco Unity. Their calls now travel over the same
broadband connection that they use for data, eliminating the expense of 70 business phone lines
and toll charges for calls to Warner Pacific offices.
Warner Pacific takes advantage of Cisco Unified MeetingPlace to conduct audio and video
conferences—for weekly sales meetings, for example. Any employee can schedule a conference or
initiate a spontaneous conference. To participate with video, employees either use Cisco Unified IP
Phones 7985G with built-in video displays or Cisco Unified Video Advantage software with Cisco
Video Advantage cameras attached to their PCs, which make video calls as easy as dialing the
phone.
“Single-number reach has the potential to increase our
sales. All other things being equal, a broker will work
with a representative who is easier to reach.”
—Mike DeDecker, Network Administrator, Warner Pacific Insurance Services
For centralized monitoring, management, and gathering real-time voice-quality metrics, Warner
Pacific uses Cisco Unified Operations Manager and Cisco Unified Service Monitor. The visual,
intuitive interface for Cisco Unified Operations Manager, which DeDecker constantly keeps open on
his PC, clearly shows the relationship among solution components.
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Customer Case Study
In 2005, Warner Pacific upgraded to Cisco Unified Communications Manager 5.0. Among the most
valuable benefits for DeDecker are that software is preloaded on a Linux server and that all
software and operating system upgrades are provided on a single CD. “I save approximately one
day a month by doing one upgrade instead of one upgrade for each server,” says DeDecker. “If I
did not tell the users on Friday that I was doing maintenance on the phone system, they would
never have known that we upgraded.”
The new version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager improves the security of the
company’s voice system, as well, because it includes Cisco firewall technology and Cisco Security
Agent, which prevents disallowed application behavior. The behavior-based approach makes it
possible to detect and stop even those actions that have never been seen previously.
Business Results
The investment in Cisco Unified Communications is saving Warner Pacific US$150,000 to
US$200,000 annually. The largest savings component, US$84,000, results from eliminating the
need to pay for home phone lines for 70 teleworkers. In addition, the ability to perform moves,
adds, and changes internally instead of paying a service provider saves Warner Pacific US$85 per
incident, adding up to approximately US$48,000 annually. The remaining cost savings come from
avoiding toll charges because calls between the California and Colorado offices, and calls to and
from teleworkers, now travel over the corporate network.
Warner Pacific also credits Cisco Unified Communications with helping employees become
more productive. “We do everything that we can to make our existing employees more efficient
rather than hiring more people,” says Nelson. “With Cisco Unified Communications, our employees
can transfer calls more easily, view an online company directory, and review their incoming and
outgoing calls from their phones or from Cisco Unified Personal Communicator.”
Cisco Unified Communications strengthens the Warner Pacific brand. The solution makes it
easier for callers to reach company employees. One reason is the Cisco Mobile Connect
application. “A broker can reach a sales representative by dialing a single number rather than first
trying the office number and then the cellular number,” says DeDecker. “Single-number reach has
the potential to increase our sales. All other things being equal, a broker will work with a
representative who is easier to reach.” A representative whose phone rings just as he or she is
walking out of the office can answer it on a cell phone, improving service by sparing the caller from
having to redial or leave voicemail. Similarly, an employee who begins a call on an IP phone and
wants to continue the call on a cell phone can do so with the touch of a button.
Warner Pacific can more easily retain customer relationships if an employee leaves the
company. Instead of calling the employee’s personal cell phone number, customers call the office
phone number, which belongs to the company. If an employee leaves, the company simply
changes the cell phone redirect number in the Cisco Mobile Connect application to the new
employee’s cell phone number.
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Customer Case Study
PRODUCT LIST
Routing and Switching
● Cisco Catalyst 6500 switch
● Cisco Catalyst 3700 switches
● Cisco Catalyst 3800 switches
Network Management
● Cisco Unified Operations Manager
● Cisco Unified Service Monitor
Voice and Unified Communications
● Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Next Steps
Warner Pacific is considering using its Cisco Unified
Communications system to offer hosted voice
services for its brokers’ offices, providing another
value-added service even while creating a new
revenue stream. “When we consider new business
opportunities, we no longer need to ask ourselves if
our phone system can handle it,” says Nelson. “With
● Cisco Unity
● Cisco Unified IP Phones
our Cisco Unified Communications system, we are
● Cisco Unified MeetingPlace
● Cisco Unified MobilityManager
opportunities arise.”
VPN
● Cisco 800 Series Broadband Internet Routers
free to add communications capabilities as
To make it easier for employees to communicate
and collaborate, Warner Pacific will soon provide all
employees with Cisco Unified Personal
Communicator, a powerful computer application that helps employees reach people the first time
and communicate more effectively. “With Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, our employees
will be able to quickly see if colleagues are available or busy before trying to contact them,” says
DeDecker. “This will help us reduce phone tag and costly communication delays. Employees will
also see which method of contact is best: voice, video, instant message, or e-mail. We expect this
combination of ‘presence’ and ‘preference’ information to save significant time every day.” The
company also plans to use Cisco Unified Personal Communicator in conjunction with Cisco Unified
MeetingPlace. “If you and I are talking, I can launch a Web collaboration session in real-time with a
simple mouse click,” DeDecker says.
“In our business, the phone system is mission-critical,” DeDecker says. “We have gained a
competitive advantage by making our sales force so readily accessible.”
Printed in USA
All contents are Copyright © 1992–2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
C36-337779-01 03/07
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